But the 25-year-old New Hampshire native wants a career in international development, and she figures a couple of years helping this poor community find permits and financing for a medicinal soap business will be invaluable experience. It also feeds her passion for public service and projecting a positive U.S. image.
“This is a good way to test whether this is what I want to do,” said Hodgkins, who was a community organizer in Boston before she joined the Peace Corps in October. “I like the Peace Corps approach of working with communities, not just giving out presents right and left.”
With a mix of idealism and pragmatism, increasing numbers of Americans are turning to the Peace Corps. Some, like Hodgkins, see it as a training opportunity at a time when job prospects at home are bleak. Others have been inspired by President Barack Obama’s campaign call to public service and his frequent mention of the Peace Corps as a good vehicle for volunteerism.
At his commencement address at Arizona State University last month, Obama said the Peace Corps was a U.S. institution that shows “our commitment to working with other nations to pursue the ideals of opportunity, equality and freedom that have made us who we are.”
Peace Corps officials credit the “Obama effect” for most of the 25,000 Internet requests so far this year for “starter applications,” up 40 percent from last year.
That’s on top of a 16 percent increase in completed applications submitted in 2008. A new wrinkle to the flood of application requests is that 7 percent of them are coming from people 50 or older, up from the typical 4 percent, says the Washington, D.C.-based organization.
As other government programs are scaled back because of the global financial crisis, the Peace Corps’ budget is getting a boost from Obama. If Congress approves the proposed 9 percent increase in the agency’s 2010 budget, the number of Peace Corps volunteers, now at 7,876, is expected to rise.
These are good times for the Peace Corps, which was founded by President John Kennedy in 1961. It peaked at 15,000 volunteers in 1966 and hit a low of fewer than 5,000 in 1982.
